Acceptance
by No Sweeter Song
Summary: Before he can embrace his future, Remus has to come to terms with his past. RLNTcentric, DHcanon.


**A/N: **Haven't posted here in ages! But I'm back. I needed some time to find my OWN acceptance. Anyway. Just a one shot, here, from Remus' point of view. If he's going to make his future work, he's got to come to terms with his past. Major DH spoilers, mild angst. RLNT-centered but mostly Remus' own internal struggles.

* * *

Despite the fact that it was still light outside, he was shrouded in shadows and darkness. It was all right, though. He was used to it. The setting was so familiar. Even after barely stepping foot into the rickety building in twenty years, he still knew every crack, every tear, every mark. Not only had he not stepped foot in it, no one else apparently had, either.

Remus slowly made his way up the stairs, gingerly taking each step. Despite their age and lack of use, they seemed to support his slight frame well enough. The house, even after sitting so abandoned, was still sturdy enough.

Within moments, nostalgia slammed into his senses, like a bludger to his head. The scent was still musty, with a hint of--a bittersweet smile crossed his face--wet dog. The touch of the wood left a part of him cold. Even the sounds hadn't changed. There was still something scurrying in the attic. Peter had gone up once and come back down, confirming it wasn't a rat. A squirrel, maybe. There were still the sounds of small children outside, and the occasional smattering of pebbles against the windows. Trying to lure the ghost out, he knew.

No one seeing inside would think that the man, so quiet in his movements, so at peace in the most feared place in Britain, iwas/i the ghost of the Shrieking Shack.

The house itself had never frightened Remus. He knew its secrets. No, what had always scared him was what happened at the house. Logically, he knew by then that the animal he turned into once a month was not a direct piece of himself. But there had always been a lingering thought, especially as a child, that the monster reflected the person he was the other 27 days per moon cycle.

He made another pass around the main room, the one he usually had sat in and waited. The corner furthest from the windows. That's where he'd spent most of his time. He didn't want to see when it happened. He wanted to distance himself from it. Somehow he'd convinced himself that if he could stay away from the moon, that it'd never come. And he'd just be sitting there, alone and tired in the morning. Like a vampire, who was fine so long as they stayed away from sunlight.

But he was no vampire, and the moon would come no matter his efforts. And no matter how he fought it, the transformation would come. A few brief minutes of searing pain, and he no longer acknowledged that he was even human. He no longer knew himself.

Remus shivered in the dingy room, remembering years of being wrapped in blankets from the school that he was only going to tear apart later in the night anyway. The weather was too cold for human or beast to be without coverings, and he'd woken up so many times around the same point in the year, shaking uncontrollably on the floor, every joint aching.

Being in there was too much. He couldn't even explain, if asked, why he'd come. Closure, maybe, or connection between the boy he'd been and the man that he'd become. Maybe he was trying to make peace. Or maybe he was trying to remind himself...

When a small pair of arms wrapped around his waist from behind, Remus was so lost in thought that he jumped. Only half-coherent, he reached for a pocket, as if to grab his wand. The hand that reached around him and took his, however, stopped him. He breathed a sigh of relief as her familiar scent drifted to his nose. If he'd been paying any attention at all, he'd have noticed her immediately.

Slowly, he turned, sliding his arms around the tiny frame and holding her close. "Hullo, love," he offered, nuzzling her hair--red, that day--with his cheek.

"Wotcher," she replied, her tone much more bright than his soft, nostalgic one.

She didn't speak again, and Remus finally had to cave and ask. "How did you get in here?"

Pulling back a bit, Tonks looked up at him with a playful smile. "The front door, Lupin. It's amazing how much easier it is to do that once you know there's no ghost in here."

"But there is," he whispered, pulling away from her and walking back toward the corner.

"Hmm?" she asked, following him with her eyes. She remained standing still, her arms crossed neatly in front of her.

His eyes traced the marks his teenaged claws had made in the wood. If he focused, he could feel the horror of looking at the marks, knowing he'd caused them. The ache in his fingers from tearing the shack to shreds. The guilt for destroying property that wasn't even his own. And the knowledge that it could have just as easily been a human life as a wooden wall.

Tentatively, his hand shaking, he reached out, running his fingers over the marks. They were deep, the full length of the claw. It could've been...

He shuddered, visibly, leaning against the wall to steady himself. Remus barely even noticed when Tonks slipped up beside him, reaching out to trace the lines. "It's not you," she said simply. "Sirius always told me that. Those hours...they're not you."

"It's my body," he informed her, his words short and concise. "It may not be my mind, but it's my body and it's still me doing it." He slouched against the wall and slunk to the floor, his arms wrapping around himself absently.

Tonks didn't join him. She rested a hand against the top of his head in an almost motherly gesture. "It doesn't count if you don't have control over your own body," she informed him, her tone just above a whisper. "You didn't do this, Remus. A creature did, some animal. Not the man I love." She gave a small smile, brushing his hair off of his face. "Not the father of my child."

The words slowly impermeated his mind and Remus took a long, slow breath. Going home to her had been the right thing to do, and he'd known it from the moment he'd walked out the door. But the fact of the matter remained that he was still a werewolf and no one of his kind had ever been a true father before. None that he knew of, anyway. Almost instinctively, he reached a hand up, brushing against her slowly growing abdomen. There was a small bump where their son or daughter was growing, and he couldn't help the surge of pride and happiness that went through him. "And what if he's ashamed of me?" he said softly. "What if he comes here someday and knows?"

Slowly, though she was actually more graceful during her pregnancy than she'd been before it, she lowered herself to his side. The hand that had rested against his head shifted to his cheek, brushing her fingertips gently over it. "He won't be," she said confidently, and Remus sighed. "And don't sigh at me like that, Remus, I'm right. Because you'll love him and adore him and be the dad he needs you to be. And for one night a month, he'll know Daddy's sick from something beyond his control. I know all of that because I'll be with you, telling him."

"He'll be made fun of at school," Remus began, but was cut off by a tittering noise from his wife.

"Our child? Would probably be made fun of anyway. I'll drop him off at the Hogwarts Express with pink hair sprouting from my head, that's hardly anything a little boy needs." Tonks wore a wide smile, nestling at his side. "Love, you're freezing. Did you not even bring gloves out with you?" At the slight shake of his head, she groaned and took his hands in hers, burying them in her coat pockets. "Crazy man, you'll get sick, and then where will we be? Not snogging, that's where."

Despite himself, Remus had to chuckle. "You're so confident in all of this," he said quietly, though he felt his muscles relax considerably at her words.

She grinned widely, her head settling into the place between his neck and shoulder. "Just looking out for your best interest is all."

There was nothing he could do but chuckle slightly. "Wasn't thinking. Just came out here."

"Which was also risky," Tonks continued chiding, though there was a giggle in her voice. "Considering the school's gone quite mad and it isn't like...ihe/i doesn't know how to get in here."

Remus lifted his eyebrows at her before pulling her close and shaking his head. "I'd love to see him try it. I think he knows better, quite frankly. If he's going to start a fight, he'd be smarter to do it on his turf and..." He realised what he was about to say, but didn't curb it. It was true. "And not mine," he finished lamely.

She remained silent for a long moment. When she did speak, it was in an uncharacteristically quiet tone. "We've been over this," she said, her hands tightening around his. "This isn't you."

"It is," he replied, ignoring the slight glare on her features. "I have to come to terms with that. I can't... I can't be a husband and a father if I can't deal with the past." It had taken him long enough to figure that out. In the time he'd been away from her, he'd done his share of thinking. If he couldn't accept himself and his affliction, he couldn't possibly expect his family to.

His family. Still a surreal thought. After his mother had passed, he hadn't expected to ever have a family again. And now he had one of his own, a wife at his side and a baby on the way. Possibly more, afterwards, when the whole bloody war was over and they could truly pick up the pieces. The thought made him smile as he nestled into her. "We ought to get going," he told her a second later. "Talking about me, you shouldn't be out here, either. Get the both of you sick, after all." He pulled himself to his feet, reaching his hands out to her.

With a small smile, she accepted his hands and used the extra weight to ease herself up. "The both of us?" she asked, her voice teasing.

"Mmm hmm," he said, tucking an arm around her and leading the way to the staircase. "May as well start thinking like a trio, right? In a few months, it'll never be just the two of us again."

"That sounds almost depressing!" she protested, placing a protective hand against her abdomen.

Remus grinned, then, impulsively kissing her before starting down the rickety staircase. He stayed only a few steps ahead of her, ready to help if those stairs proved too dangerous. She shouldn't have been on them in the first place. "It's not," he continued as they reached the bottom. "It's just about the most perfect thing in the world."


End file.
